Yesterday we kicked off our new People of Fly Fishing series with Part 1 of a 10 question interview with Sam Snyder; late yesterday we added a few clicks of Sam dinking around with a few little fish back home.
Here’s the rest of his interview with a few more images from Sam…..
Some say the nation is borrowing 40 cents of every Federal dollar spent; significant cuts in Federal spending appear inevitable. Fishery and conservation measures are getting hammered. What’s the solution from where you sit? (How’s that for a loaded question?)
Well, my background might be interdisciplinary, but I am hardly an economist.
Unfortunately, this is the natural tendency of things. It is like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – people need the basics covered first. Today, Americans see jobs, education, and growing federal debt as key issues. Fisheries are a luxury according to some. Therefore, fisheries protection is low on the list for support and high on the list for gutting by the GOP as overreaching, overspending government bureaucracy. Unfortunately, though, what we fail to realize is that clean water goes well beyond fisheries. We all depend upon it, if we don’t protect it now, we’ll spend more later trying to fix it. But we don’t think long term; we think quick fix, immediate needs.
That’s not really a solution as more of a diagnosis of the problem!
We know you have an interest in river and stream access issues from prior correspondence. What do you think are the biggest issues facing fly fishers and sportsmen these days?
At the top of the list is climate change. It will alter the fisheries of the future. We need to ensure diverse, and therefore resilient, ecosystems. So many things work against that stable diversity – hatcheries, damns, mega-mines, etc.
But we need anglers to help ensure intact watersheds and systems. In a time when angler numbers are shrinking a bit, we need to get more kids out on the water. Richard Louv wrote of “nature deficit disorder,” as a root cause of many contemporary social ills. He has a point that our kids are increasingly disconnected from nature.
Moreover, as fewer anglers are on the water and instead playing video games inside, we have fewer people to fight for the places we love to fish. This is why the access issue is so important. Sure it is key for our sport, but we need people to know water, in order to help protect it.
Obviously you’re deeply involved in the battle for Bristol Bay. What’s the latest from the front lines?
Back in May 2010, 9 Bristol Bay tribes, commercial fishing organizations, Trout Unlimited, and others began a steady petition of EPA to use their authority, granted to them under section 404c (regulates disposal of dredge and fill material in wetlands and waters of the US), of the Clean Water Act, to protect Bristol Bay. EPA has used this power sparingly in the history of the CWA. Thirteen times, actually. If there has ever been a time and place to use this authority, the time is now.
As of February 2011, EPA announced they would commence a watershed assessment to establish the ecological value and integrity of Bristol Bay and assess potential impacts large scale mining upon the Bristol Bay ecosystem. From this assessment, we hope they will move to protect Bristol Bay, by regulating the disposal of the roughly 10 billion tons of mining waste Pebble will generate.
Now, we need folks to speak out, write their elected officials, and urge them to support measures that might protect Bristol Bay. This is an issue that goes beyond our fly fishing passion to traditional livelihood of Alaska Natives, a robust and sustainable commercial fishery, a healthy ecosystem and a vibrant economy that extends well beyond the waters of Bristol Bay to the nation as a whole, after all over 50% of global sockeye come from Bristol Bay. For more info on how to help, see http://www.savebristolbay.org.
Living amidst some of the most incredible water in the world, what do you consider to be your home water and what do you really appreciate about it?
I guess in Alaska, I would say I fish the Kenai the most, but there is a lot of water to choose from and explore. Fishing in Alaska, on the road system is an experience unto its own. Solitude is harder to come by, though possible if you work for it. But to float the Kenai, for example, and have a daily and legit chance of catching rainbows bigger than my four month old son, is unique opportunity to say the least.
But the question of home water is something I have wrestled with for a long time. Wendell Berry wrote that “We must quit solving our problems by moving on. We must try to stay put and to learn where we are geographically, historically, and ecologically.” David James Duncan or ecologist Wes Jackson have written that we should strive to become native to our places. They mean that we should get to know a place deeply, understand it, and appreciate it. This is the core tenet of what philosophers call bioregionalism. In a fishing sense, there is something special about deeply knowing a river, throughout the seasons, changing years, and varied conditions. This is something I have only rarely caught a glimpse of, though.
Being an academic, I have hardly stayed put. I have been a nomad for some time. I spent the school years of college fishing in Central Pennsylvania with summers in the Roaring Fork Valley of CO, a few years in Central NY, then some time in FL where I paddled around in the gulf on a kayak looking for reds and sea trout or chased bass and sun fish in the warm waters of Central FL, and many places in between. I have been fortunate to fish a lot of water thus far in my life, but I have hardly stayed put.
The trouble with living in Anchorage is that you don’t have a stream in your backyard. I miss being 15 minutes from water. Here, it is always an effort, a drive, a commitment for the day. You can’t just head to the water for a quick spell to catch a few fish. All of this, of course, changes the way one comes to know a bioregion.
So, at this point, I am not sure if I have “home” water. Though, whenever on a stream – new or familiar – I always feel at home to some degree. That is one of the reasons why we fish, right?
When you’re not home in AK, where would you rather be fishing?
In New Mexico or Southern CO on the waters where I cut my proverbial fly fishing teeth. Small water, small (fiberglass) rods, and native Rio Grande cutthroat trout. Ideally fishing with my dad, who I can thank for my fly fishing devotion. He is an amazing, totally unassuming, angler. There are few people that I have seen catch as many fish as he can. And, no matter the size of the fish, the number of fish that day, he giggles with the same glee every time a fish tugs on his line.
If you could inspire fly fishers to do just one thing from a conservation standpoint in 2011, what would it be?
Think about the bigger picture. Teach a kid to fish. Find amazement in the ecosystems of the fish they pursue (salt, warm water, or coldwater). Use all of that to stand up and speak out
for what we have now, what we stand to gain, and what we stand to lose for the next generation of anglers.
But, please speak up. Or, as I have written, get off the water. The reality is that if you are not willing to go beyond yourself and fight for the bigger picture, then you are missing the inherent joy of fly fishing and have no business being on the water.
How can we help you plug the band? What’s new?
Ahh the band, Hot Dish. Well, we need to get in a studio and record some tunes. Every show we play in AK, folks ask if we have any CDs and we sadly say no. So, until we get our lazy tails in the studio we run up against a promotional brick wall. We are a six piece bluegrass band, so it is always difficult to get us all together for an extended weekend to record. Of course, during the late summer and fall in AK, if given the choice I would choose the river any day and twice on Sundays. I guess that shows where my priorities are! Maybe we’ll get it together this winter when the fishing sucks.
Tags: People of Fly Fishing
